A graphical user interface (GUI) for a computer system provides a graphical representation or display on a display device associated with the computer system. This graphical representation allows a user to interact with one or more programs loaded on the computer system through input devices such as keyboard cursors, mouse cursors and cursor control devices such as mouse and monitor such actions. When using a GUI to interact with a program or computer system, cursors allow the user to move to various positions on the display which comprises the GUI and perform different functions such as typing, editing and so on. Typically, in word processing systems, the keyboard cursor moves along with the text on the display as the user types the text and the mouse cursor remains stationary.
Problems arise when a user, for instance, desires to correct a spelling mistake. Typically, the user will need to right click on the word by dragging the mouse cursor to the word. This is time consuming not to mention tedious when editing bulk text.
Further, if a user hovers a mouse pointer over various fields in a form based PDF document without clicking on it, tooltips associated with the various fields appear. A tooltip refers to a supplemental text that appears when a user hovers a mouse pointer over an area of the text without clicking on it. However, tooltips do not appear if the user clicks on a tab key because clicking on the tab key does not cause the mouse to move. In such a case, the user will need to physically hover the mouse pointer over desired areas for tooltips to appear. Such a method is cumbersome.
FIG. 1 illustrates the respective positions of a keyboard cursor 105 and mouse cursor 110 on a display in a word processing program according to the prior art 100. When user is typing a text, the keyboard cursor 105 moves along with the text whereas the mouse cursor 110 remains stationary. In instances where the user desires to edit some typed text, the user needs to drag the mouse cursor 110 to the keyboard cursor 105 location for performing this action. For example, if the user makes a spelling mistake while typing a text, he/she has to drag the mouse cursor 110 to that particular word (where the keyboard cursor 105 is located) to correct the word. This is a tedious and time consuming process which reduces computing speed.
In some other prior art techniques, the mouse cursor 110 is controlled by the keyboard cursor 105. However, the above-defined problems persist with these techniques as well because these methods do not align the keyboard cursor 105 movement with the mouse cursor movement 110. Thus, each time a user desires to drag the mouse cursor 110 he/she needs to hit a key on the keyboard.